Plenary,
Meeting date: Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. Our first item of business, as every Wednesday, is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Canon Bill Anderson of St Francis of Assisi church in Aberdeen.
Canon Bill Anderson (St Francis of Assisi Church, Aberdeen):
A great influence during my Edinburgh schooldays was my Latin teacher, John Penman. He had a forbidding demeanour but his love for his subject shone through in a compelling manner. Some of his much-repeated sayings come back to me from time to time, and two in particular seem apt to be mentioned here. The first comes from the playwright Terence, "Quot homines, tot sententiae"—there are as many points of view as there are folk. The second runs, "Alii alia dixerunt"—some said one thing, some another. The first saying may be true of debating sessions in the Parliament, the second being a postscript to the same.
Within the curriculum, my close friends and I counterbalanced our taste for Latin with a loathing for maths that, I fear, persists with me. Extracurricular delights included acting in school plays and speaking in debates. The cut and thrust of reasoned argument—so often acquired in youth—and even a sense of the theatrical must be part of every politician's stock in trade. The correct use of words, with attention to their exact meaning, is clearly important for those outside politics, too, including us clergy, and it is regrettable that the finer points of grammar and syntax carry less weight with speakers and writers now than they did, say, 30 or 40 years ago. That is when Latin and Greek began to decline in Scottish schools.
A classical friend of mine converses, mutatis mutandis, in the manner of Cicero, and he looks like an ancient Roman senator as he marches around the cobbled streets of old Aberdeen. Preparing to go shopping, he will say, "I am about to do homage at the shrine of the goddess Asda." Glasgow born, I am at home with the idiomatic directness of west of Scotland parlance and its ability to wrong foot the stranger. I once got lost en route to Cambuslang. Pulling up at a corner, with due decorum I asked a passer-by, "Could you please direct me to Cambuslang?" The reply was lightning fast: "You're in it, Jimmy."
For perfect style and a perfect message, the Bible stands supreme. Allow me to conclude with a text of blessing that was bestowed upon his readers by St Paul:
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."
Amen.